The present invention relates to the field of electronic musical instruments, and more particularly to an improved performance data processing method, performance data processing program, performance data processing apparatus and tone signal synthesizing method for imparting performance data with an ensemble feeling.
In cases where an ensemble performance (session) is executed using acoustic musical instruments, tones performed by individual players can not be exactly the same even if all the players use musical instruments of a same type to perform a same music piece.
Performance styles and feelings of individual players would vary depending on their character and performing tendency (hereinafter referred to simply as “character” or “individuality”). Also, the acoustic musical instruments used by the individual players would have acoustic characteristics differing subtly therebetween. As a consequence, tones generated by the musical instruments would be imparted with an ensemble feeling.
In the field of electronic musical instruments, there have been employed various schemes or techniques to produce such an ensemble feeling in, for example, live keyboard performance or music piece production carried out by manually inputting musical notes to a sequencer.
First one of the techniques for producing such an ensemble feeling is “detune”, where tones of a plurality of elements are simultaneously generated in response to designation of a tone color (voice). In this case, the tones of the individual elements would be generated at slightly different pitches, so that, even when a note-on message of a single note is input, there can be imparted an effect as if a plurality of tones were being generated simultaneously. However, here, settings of the individual elements are merely differentiated from each other uniformly, so that an amount of detune would be the same for all tones generated. Therefore, this first technique would present the problem that it is unable to produce such a feeling of variation as produced by an ensemble performance of acoustic musical instruments.
Second one of the techniques for producing such an ensemble feeling uses a voice called a “section tone”. According this technique, an ensemble performance by a plurality of musical instruments is sampled in advance to provide original waveforms for a waveform memory tone generator. For example, if a section tone “strings” is selected in a “strings” tone color section, there can be obtained sounds of realistic atmosphere having an ensemble feeling. However, because this technique performs various tone generator control uniformly on unseparably-synthesized section tones, output tones tend to be very monotonous and unnatural. Further, although there are user's needs for various section tones, such as those of strings, brass and human voices, these section tones can not be realized unless they are provided in advance in the tone generator.
Third one of the techniques for producing such an ensemble feeling is one that creates and uses as many performance data of a plurality of solo voices (tone colors of separate musical instruments) as necessary. Fourth one of the techniques is one that uses in combination the voices provided by the above-mentioned second and third techniques.
The above-mentioned third and fourth techniques may enhance a capability to provide desired sounds by variously combining the voices. However, to attain an ensemble feeling, sequence data have to be prepared for each of the voices and adjusted appropriately through trial and error, which would require complicated and troublesome setting operation. Further, the third and fourth techniques are only applicable to cases where notes are manually entered, and they can not deal with real-time performances on keyboards etc.
In addition to the aforementioned problems in attaining an ensemble feeling, there has been demands that expression reflecting character and performing tendencies of the players be effectively and easily imparted to individual performances in an ensemble performance and that such expression reflecting character and performing tendency of the player be effectively and easily imparted to even a solo performance.